- Hi and welcome to Pilots, Props and Planes.

Today, we're visiting Naval Air Station, Lemoore California.

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(plane engine roaring) (upbeat music) (gentle music) - Naval Air Station Lemoore was built in 1961 and is the home of Strike Fighter Wing Pacific.

Under the command of Capt.

Quinn this unit flies F-18 Super Hornet.

Naval Air Station Lemoore is also home to Joint Strike Fighter Wing flying the F-35 and commanded by Capt.

Covarrubias There are numerous F-18 Super Hornet Squadrons as well as the newest aircraft in the Navy's fleet the F-35.

In this interview we're gonna meet men and women of our United States Navy who work on the aircraft who fly the aircraft and who control the aircraft from the tower.

You'll get an opportunity to see all of the working aspects of this wonderful naval air station which is the pride of the Central Valley of California.

(jazz music) Now I have the privilege of speaking with the executive officer of VFA-25 the Fist of the Fleet here Lemoore Naval Air Station commander Mark Tedrow.

Mark, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much for being a part of it.

- Thank you, sir.

Thanks for having me I appreciate it.

- So when we first got here this morning we have the privilege of watching you and your flight come in and go out on the runway and you were in that flight or leading that flight?

- I was, yep.

I was the first aircraft to land I think that you saw, yep.

It was a lot of fun we had a fun flight today.

- First time I've actually had a chance to be out on the runway - That's great - And see something - Pretty loud is it?

- That was very impressive.

It was loud but great (Mark chuckling) So tell me a little bit about yourself and your background.

How did you get involved with aviation?

What inspired you to become a Naval pilot?

- Growing up, I didn't really have passion for aviation you could say.

It wasn't until I decided or I got recruited to go to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

While I was at the Naval Academy there's a full on commitment to serve in the United States Navy.

I didn't know what I wanna do with that time and then at the end of my first year I saw my first Blue Angels air show.

And that kind of hooked me right then and there.

So, after that first year at the academy I kinda set my sight on aviation because I thought if there's one job I wanna do that was it.

And so from then on out I pursued aviation and here I am almost 20 later still doing the profession that I love.

- So you saw Blue Angel air show and you have the honor of having been a Blue Angel - Yes sir.

I am one of the lucky ones.

I was inspired by the Blue Angels a long time ago when I was younger and I set that goal early on and I was lucky enough to achieve that goal.

It was probably one of the best accomplishments and best experiences of my life.

The Navy Marine Corps we have the finest jet training in the world.

So, right then and there that kind of opens the door for a lot of aviation opportunities.

That's one of the beautiful things about the Navy or any other entity in the department of defense.

There are so many opportunities out there, right.

So just because you're here on the flight line Lemoore and you're working on aircraft doesn't mean that that has to be your last destination.

You could do anything you wanna do.

Pursue an education you could pursue aviation you could pursue other fields and the Navy's very open to different career paths and exploring those opportunities.

So, I try to tell them, "Hey, while you're here get your education get your qualification."

That way it opens up a whole lot of opportunities for you further on down the road.

Yeah it's a great organization I'm proud to be a part of it.

(jet engine roaring) - So we are at the Fleet Readiness Center West here at Naval Air Station Lemoore and my next guest has a most impressive background and a most impressive job description.

Mariana Magana you are the site lead engineer for the F-18 Super Hornet Structures.

- Yes - Here at Naval Air Station Lemoore.

Originally what motivated you into aerospace or being an astronaut?

What was your initial?

Was it an air show?

Was it a television show a movie - It was the NASA channel.

(Mariana chuckling) My dad and I would always watch the NASA channel and I don't know if it's whatever they talked about or I'm not exactly sure but I always thought it'd be really cool to go to space and I think it was just that.

Just wondering what I would see when I got up there.

And so, it was between aerospace engineering or astronomy but I chose engineering because thought I could do more things with it.

- What kinds of things are involved in maintaining that these aircraft are ready at all times?

- Well first off there's a lot of different types of inspections that we have to do.

And a lot of them go either by days or whenever something just needs to get looked at.

Though normally they'll look at the whole area and if they see any type of corrosion because these jets land on carriers they usually we get a lot of corrosion.

We'll see, obvious visible corrosion but sometimes it's an oversized hole or a cracked part or something like that.

And that's the type of work that we would end up fixing.

They'll submit a task to us and then we'll say, "Can we fix this?

How can we fix it?

Would it be better to replace it?"

That's the type of work.

- We're now at Fleet Readiness Center West the Power Plants division and we are with Aviation Machinist Mate 1st Class, Trisha Smithson.

- Here we work on the F414 engine for the Super Hornet and the Growlers.

We do the repair and rework of all the engines that come here for the engines across the world.

The fleet bring them in and we fix them and repair them and send 'em back out.

- And with me now is one of the pilots in VFA-154 Lieutenant Tom Lang.

So did you aspire to be a pilot or did it happen?

What got you to this point?

- From a young age I knew I wanted to be a pilot.

I went to school to learn how to fly airplanes.

Never thought that I could be in the military one day flying airplanes but I decided to apply and here I am now.

- Flying with the top fighters in the world, very cool.

Did you fly before you got into the military?

- I did.

- And you got your private pilot's license and - I did yes sir.

- What did you learn flying on?

- Cessna 172.

- What do you like best about flying the F-18 Super Hornet?

- That I can land it on the air craft carrier.

Hands down that's the one reason I wanna join naval aviation to be part of the few that can land on the boat.

- Describe the feeling.

- It's indescribable.

- If you can.

- Indescribable honestly.

The first time I did it in the T-45 I don't remember much I just remember rolling out and next thing I knew I was in the wires.

- What would you tell a young person right now that came to you and said, "I wanna fly one of these.

How do I get there?"

- If I had to tell a young person how to get here where I'm standing it'd be to study hard, stay focused keep your head down.

And then just ultimately there's no dream that's too far out of reach.

Like me you gotta try.

- The F-18 F model is a two seat model of the Super Hornet.

The pilot in the front and the weapons systems officer flying from the backseat of the aircraft creates a team environment where both team members work together cover each other in the theater of combat.

And we're visiting now with one of the Weapons Systems Officers for VFA-154, Lieutenant Liz Corey.

How did you get into the backseat of a Super Hornet.

- Oh my wildest dreams came true.

I just wanted to be in a carrier aircraft.

I got into it because I've always been an adventurous person.

So then I ROTC was a good way to help pay for college.

So that's kind of how I started And then the more I learned about the Navy and all of the things that they had to offer I decided that aviation was the way I wanted to go.

And then from there I just loved jets I loved the mission sets.

(gentle music) - One of the other important functions here at Naval Air Station Lemoore is search and rescue.

And now we're visiting with several crew members of Naval Air Station Lemoore Search and Rescue a couple of pilots and crewmen.

As a corpsman what are your functions in search and rescue on the helicopter?

- So with us we have a I guess a few different functions.

Mainly we're there for medical so if we get a rescue here since we're over land we'll repel down triage the scene and then we'll recover the patient.

And then we do all the medical work up in the actual helicopter in transit to the hospital.

So pretty much ahead of all the medical and then also crossover in the actual air crewmen duties as well.

- Here we fly the MH 60 Sierra Aircraft which is a variant of the same aircraft that's flown in the fleet.

- Describe some of the conditions you've flown in in order to get to a scene where you do have to recover somebody.

- So we, at Lemoore we are a unique search rescue unit in that we operate both for over water and over land type alerts.

So when the jets at Lemoore are flying and operating and training over the water we forward base closer to there so we can respond to any potential calls that could happen there.

And then we also conduct training and we practice to the east of us in the Sierras in order to be ready for any rescues or down pilots that happen to be over more mountainous terrain.

- So normally in the fleet we're kind of like a Jack of all trades.

Here we act as a rescue swimmer as we will get hoisted down or jump outta the helicopter into the ocean to save a certain pilot somebody's who's drowning.

And also over land we're responsible as the hoist operators such as managing the hoist cable sending it down the medic sending down whoever needs to secure that operation if that makes sense.

- Are your responsibilities confined to the aircraft at all times or do you find yourself having to go into the water from time to of time?

Are you qualified to do those things?

- Yes we are qualified to jump into the water ourselves as so.

Funny enough so once we are watching sending the alert for when the jets are over water our positions swap.

So we'll have the medics as the hoist operators and we're the rescue swimmer.

So we jump and then if anything we're over land they swap again.

So now they're the ones going down and we're the ones as the hoist operators.

- The second of our pilots is Lieutenant Josh Tassone Josh, how did you get into helicopter flying and what paths led you to a career in the Navy?

- So my story similar to Lieutenant Commanders here.

Started out right outta college.

I graduated from the Citadel in 2014 and then took a commission from an ROTC scholarship there.

Went to flight training in Pensacola started out in the T-6 and then progressed to the TH-57 which is also now starting to be phased out with a new helicopter trainer.

And now I'm flying in the Sierra.

- [Bill] One of the critical aspects of aircraft operations especially on a military installation where there are so many high performance aircraft is air traffic control.

We are now talking with Air Traffic Control Chief Tyler McKay who's going to take us through some of the day to day operations and what's involved with air traffic control here at Naval Air Station at Lemoore.

- We're here in direct support of the air wings.

Our job is mainly consists of separating aircraft, sequencing aircraft to and from AS Lemoore.

- [Man] (indistinct) tower traffic you're 12.5 miles to F-15 and 2000 (indistinct) coming straight through Illinois.

- We are incorporated into the National Airspace System.

So we have surrounding sectors that we coordinate with whether they be from Oakland, Fresno places like that.

So we deal with the launch and recovery of aircraft and we just make sure they do it safely.

- I've noticed that because of the location of Naval Air Station Lemoore you're out in the heartland of Central California.

So it's got to provide wonderful airspace for the military flight training and operations process.

But I also see a few agricultural aircraft out here that are technically I think in your airspace.

- [Tyler] Absolutely - And are they in touch with you and you with them during their operations?

- Absolutely, so we have a lot of crop dusting operations that go on around us.

They will call our facility watch supervisor and say, "Hey, I'm gonna be working here at this altitude from this time to this time."

They'll pass that up to the tower and the tower will be in direct comms with them.

So they can assure that the pilots are our military aircraft that are coming back that they know what that aircraft is doing that's maybe below their final approach of course so.

Naval Air Station Lemoore is somewhat unique where we have two local controllers.

One for a departure runway one for an arrival runway.

And the reason that is is we have two 13,500 foot runways that are staggered by quite a bit by 4,600 feet.

So this is looking at our Western runway.

This is runway three-two-left or one-four-right depending on the direction of the wind.

So this is typically our arrival runway.

So the person that would be standing here would be our or excuse me our local west controller.

So they'll be dealing with most of the inbound traffic.

Now sometimes it will go left to right depending on what approach has going on downstairs.

That's a tower radar display so we can see a little bit farther out than our naked eye.

So that kind of helps me paint a picture.

So for instance it looks like I have what is that?

Hawk 85 is on a final control approach.

And I have it looks like expert two two is coming in for the overhead.

So I would say expert two two Lemoore tower left brake approved by my three two left.

And then they would respond with something like left brake approved expert two two.

- So I'm noticing right now coming into about the center of the screen there is an aircraft that looks like it's doing a break for landing.

And that would've been one of the aircraft you saw on the radar screen above.

- [Tyler] Yeah, absolutely.

- [Bill] We've seen the incredible performance capabilities of the twin jet engines on the Boeing FA-18 Super Hornet.

Now, watch wood can be achieved when a jet engine is attached to a vintage Waco biplane.

(instrumental music) - Actually it started life as a 1937 model UPF-7 Waco raising had 220 horsepower.

Now it has well actually we went from 220 to 330 to 450 to 600.

(lady chuckling) And then we start backtracking for some reason.

We took the 600 off put the 450 back on it and a jet engine.

And the jet is the old GE CJ610 which came on the early year kits like the 24th.

And it's basically 3000 pounds of thrust.

And so an effect that makes this airplane better than one to one powered ratio which simply means I'll challenge any military jet aircraft from a standing start to 10,000 feet in a climb race and I'll probably beating it.

So it's a very good climb rate.

It's approaching 15,000 feet a minute initially but that's a unique thing about this airplane now is that it's a big biplane It has lots of drag and when these wingwalkers climb out there it is even more dragged.

And it's always been a struggle for me as a pilot to ever have enough power to overcome all the drag the airplane, plus the wingwalkers.

But now I've eliminate my density altitude and power problem by adding this jet to airplane.

And it's not about speed.

Don't go any faster than I ever went in this airplane.

Like before I dived to get the speed now I don't have to dive.

All I have to do is push the throttle forward and I have speed.

And so don't go any faster.

It's just that you can go up very well.

The climb used to take you two, three, four minutes to climb up to get altitude.

And now the climb is the show in this thing 'cause it only takes eight to 10 seconds to get what it took three, four, five minutes before.

And, when you have a wingwalker standing on the top wing especially this guy at a 180 pounds and six foot one.

That's where he's the most draggish standing vertically on the top wing.

And we can literally just pull up and do vertical four point rolls and top out whatever altitude we want.

So, wingwalkers are not a problem (indistinct) my search for power is over.

My dad said that he was taught, start teaching me how to fly when I was still in diapers.

And of course I don't remember that but I do remember eight years old being able to fly Piper PA-14 Family Cruiser.

And I was flying it very well felt very confident.

And then they skipped about 12 years old while I was home alone one day I was getting a little bored and I decided to go fly.

So I just drag my dad's airplane out of the hangar which was a very difficult task 'cause I was just a little guy then but finally got it out enough to clear the prop on the hangar roof there and just taxied out and went and soloed myself at 12.

And then shortly after that solo I went to my first air show as a spectator and I fell in love with the airshow industry and all biplanes.

And so my search was on for my biplane then and that's all I thought about and worked toward.

This airplane right here behind us actually was the first biplane that I bought.

And I was 19 years old and that was like 1967.

And I started the procedure of modifying this airplane into an airshow airplane and it evolved into what it is today.

I decided to start Jim Franklin's Flying Circus.

And in the very beginning it was just my solo act.

And then I decided to have a wingwalker.

So we developed the wingwalking act and then started a comedy act with a cub and motorcycled airplane transfers and firewall crashes where the guy that transfers off the motorcycle on the airplane on the rope ladder would drag him through a firewall.

But that's kind of the simple version of how I got in involved in flying and in the air show business.

- [Announcer] Kyle Franklin has experience as a pilot as well as wingwalker.

- I guess started this like him very young since I grew up around airplanes and wingwalkers and the everything associated with air shows.

I was four weeks old first time I went in an airplane and kinda grew up around it.

Grew up around wingwalkers.

And when I was little I used to imitate wingwalkers whenever he'd be on the ground taxing around or whatever I'd get out on the wing and walk around and just imitate him lot.

And it's just something I always wanted to try to do.

And then when I was 14 I'd been bugging him quite a while trying to let it go do it and finally talked him into it and went up and did my first wing walk.

When I was up in Canada.

I'm a pilot too.

I started flying when I was eight I fly another Waco similar to this one and just been doing it for quite a while here and probably been doing it for a lot longer.

- [Bill] Back at Naval Air Station Lemoore we're with the commanding officer of this remarkable naval base Captain Douglas Peterson.

As a base commander what are some of the responsibilities that you have not only on the base but also with the community around you?

- So we have our own little community we have about 1800 homes on this base that are inside the fence line of the base.

So there are families that live on this base that I'm responsible for their security their fire, their infrastructure that sort of thing.

And then we have about 2200 barracks rooms, dorm rooms effectively for young unmarried sailors.

Also the same responsibilities for them and it's a community.

We provide some things like we have a base theater a base bowling alley things like that, activities.

Then, when everyone's at work we have about 10,000 military members and about 6,000 civilian members.

So almost 16,000 people that work on this base and or live on the space if they're family members.

And during the day it can get quite busy.

I'm responsible for law enforcement traffic but more importantly to the navy of course keeping a runway operating.

That's really the thing that I'm paid to do is to make sure that that runway up there works and that the air units get to use it the Squadrons whenever they want.

The thing that brings you to naval aviation is that it's a fun job.

Whether it's fixing the planes or controlling them from the tower or working on the arresting gear engine so that they can stop a plane and have an emergency.

Or whether you're actually one of the people who's flying them.

All of those things are wonderful and they look like fun because they are fun.

But the thing that keeps you in the navy is the team, the camaraderie.

When you go out on an aircraft carrier flight deck as a pilot there are probably 40 odd people on that on and around you in that carrier who if they don't do their job right it could hurt you or the plane.

And if you don't do your job right it could hurt them or their equipment.

And of those 40 people you might not even see 20 or 30 of them because they're doing their job somewhere under the flight deck or whatever but you still trust them implicitly.

And that trust is a really valuable builder of the team spirit in the Navy.

You know that everyone in the Navy is working hard to do their job right because they want to.

Our primary job is the fleet the fighter and the family.

And we mean by that we make sure that the planes are flying and that they have a place to train from.

That the people who work on those planes and fly those planes are taken care of and provide the tools they need to do their jobs.

And that their families are taken care of so that those sailors don't have to worry about their families when they're away.

(jazz music) - Thank you very much for joining us on Pilots, Props and Planes and we'll see you next time.

(jazz music) Funding for Pilots, Props and Planes is provided by.

Reedley college nestled against the Sierra in Central California offers a full spectrum of flight science, aviation mechanics and professional pilot education in an affordable community college setting, go tigers.

(plane engine roaring) (upbeat music) (gentle music)